


Tactical Retreat

by fictive_vein



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictive_vein/pseuds/fictive_vein
Summary: 'There was a kid sitting across from him, at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee. He met Ray’s stare with a glum look, and took another sip of coffee. He grimaced.“Allison said there’d be decent coffee.” The kid glared at him as if expecting Ray to provide an explanation. Ray continued to stare. He closed his eyes, sent up a quick prayer, and opened them again. The boy was still there.And then he wasn’t.'Post Series 2, The Hargreeves siblings need somewhere to regroup.
Relationships: Raymond Chestnut & The Hargreeves Family, Raymond Chestnut/Allison Hargreeves, The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 10
Kudos: 600
Collections: The umbrella academy





	Tactical Retreat

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [those we leave behind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844371) by [GodOfLaundryBaskets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GodOfLaundryBaskets). 



> Inspired completely by those we leave behind by GodOfLaundryBaskets. I wanted more of Raymond interacting with Allison's siblings, so I totally ripped off their idea and wrote it. For the original, far better version of this, please check it out.
> 
> I wrote this after one marathon viewing of series 2, and so I completely forgot until it was half done that Diego and Ray met in canon (in fairness to myself, it lasted about 20 seconds). I couldn't be bothered to rewrite it, so for the purposes of this story that never happened.

Ray was too damn old to be falling asleep any place that wasn’t his own bed, which definitely included the kitchen table. He groaned, and it sounded to his ears about as pitiful as he felt. The blessed smell of fresh coffee reached him, and Ray silently thanked the Lord for his angel of a wife.

Allison.

Allison, his wife, who had left him to go to the future (back from whence she came, apparently) and who could not possibly be here to make him coffee and give him an earful about falling asleep at the table.

The threat of someone being in the house, the third damn home invasion of the week was enough to make him jerk upright, swatting at the crumpled bit of paper stuck to his face. The letter, which contained the last words he would ever receive from his wife and a fair few tears of his, drifted to the floor, but Ray didn’t pick it up.

There was a kid sitting across from him, at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee. He met Ray’s stare with a glum look, and took another sip of coffee. He grimaced.

“Allison said there’d be decent coffee.” The kid glared at him as if expecting Ray to provide an explanation. Ray continued to stare. He couldn’t be older than fifteen, dressed in some fancy uniform that looked like it cost a damn sight more than Ray’s best suit. (Well, the best suit he’d ever paid for in full anyway. The outfits from his and Allison’s shopping trip were still laid out on the bed. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to put them away.) He closed his eyes, sent up a quick prayer, and opened them again. The boy was still there.

And then he wasn’t.

“The hell!” The chair clattered to the floor as Ray leapt up, spinning around wildly just in time to see the kid reappear. By which he meant leap through a glowing blue hole in the air. People had been appearing out of thin air in his house far too much recently in his opinion. He caught a glimpse of his neighbour’s kitchen before both smart black shoes landed safely and the _thing_ seemed to collapse in on itself behind him. His yelling was completely ignored as the kid placed a different brand of coffee on the counter and immediately started making himself a new cup. Ray considered going for the bat.

“Kid, who the _hell_ are you? How do you know Allison?” Before the boy had done more than open his mouth to answer, he was interrupted by the door to the living room swinging open. The man who stepped through it looked Chicano, with his long hair tied back and dressed in black from head to toe. Abruptly, Ray was very sure he’d interrupted a burglary. The burglar turned around to quietly shut the door, and Ray took a surreptitious step closer to the knife drawer while his back was turned.

“Five, can you keep it down in here? Not all of us keep our blood so caffeinated it could be used as jet fuel. Some of us need some damn sleep.” Glaring viciously, the kid - Five? What kind of name was that? – took a dangerous step forward, exuding such curmudgeonly malevolence that Ray edged a bit further away. These two knew each other? Was the kid a burglar? A burglar with damn superpowers?

“Well I’m sorry your beauty rest was interrupted, Diego. Some of us have more important things to do than sleep, like incredibly complex metatemporal calculations and correcting our whole family’s timeline!”

“That _you_ fucked up!”

“While I was preventing the apocalypse! Again!”

“ _You_ prevented the apocalypse? Who was it that infiltrated the Commission? Who was it that played the Infinite Switchboard like a damn violin?” The kid looked like he was experiencing too much indignation for his small body to contain.

“ _Infiltrated?_ You were drugged and kidnapped by your crazy brain-washed ex-girlfriend-” There was more after that, but Ray hadn’t understood much they’d said in the last few minutes and so he gave up trying to follow their conversation. Of course, there was one word he’d understood perfectly: Allison.

Somehow, this teenager who could leap through holes in the air and this guy with a serious appreciation for leather knew his wife. For someone who hadn’t had a single person in the world she’d known for longer than a year come to her wedding, she’d had a lot of people showing up claiming to know her in the last few days. Claiming to be family.

_I had a- well let’s just say I had a pretty strange childhood. My Dad… eccentric is probably the nicest way you could describe him. He adopted us. Bought us, really. I had five brothers - you’ve met Luther and Klaus – and a sister. Vanya. The seven of us, we were all special._

She’d sneered that last word; an angry, disdainful thing he’d never seen on her face before.

 _You_ had _five brothers?_

_One of us - Ben - he died._

Ray hadn’t pushed for more details about her siblings after that, and Allison hadn’t volunteered them. She’d explained how her powers worked, who she’d been before she landed in Dallas, Texas, 1961. Told him about Claire.

Four remaining brothers, and he’d met two of them. That left two more. Ray looked at them again. The arguing had decreased in volume but increased in ferocity by several orders of magnitude. The older one had produced a mean-looking throwing knife from somewhere, and the kid’s fists were clenched and glowing with the same blue energy from before. They certainly looked special.

But if these were Allison’s brothers, who were meant to go with her to the future, and they were here in his kitchen-

Ray made it across the kitchen in two steps and burst through the living room door. It smacked into the wall with a loud bang that caused Luther to jerk upright from where he’d been sleeping on the floor, but Ray paid him no mind.

There, curled up sound asleep at one end of the couch like she wasn’t in the least bothered about the dead body that’d been sat there less than a day ago, was Allison. A petite white woman who must be Vanya lay against the other arm, and Klaus lay on his back between them, with his head in Allison’s lap and his feet in Vanya’s, a damn cowboy hat perched on his face.

Suddenly shaky on his feet, Ray lowered himself to his knees by Allison. He brushed her hair out of her face, and laughed softly, and kissed her forehead. He’d honestly believed he would never see her again. She stirred, turning her face into his palm where it now cupped her cheek.

“Ray?” Her voice was husky; rough, like it had been when he met her, like it still got in the early morning sometimes. She was really here.

“It’s me baby.” She smiled, eyes still closed. Then they flew open and in one quick movement she shoved Klaus’ head off her lap and threw herself into his arms. Ray heard him making disgruntled noises as he sat up and Vanya’s sleepy, questioning voice, but all he cared about right then was holding onto Allison as tightly as possible. “What are you doing here?” Ray asked, speaking into her hair. Allison pulled back before she answered, but stayed within his arms, for which he was grateful.

“We needed somewhere to hide.”

“I think Five’s preferred term is tactical retreat.” Said Klaus, making himself comfortable on the couch as though he hadn’t also witnessed the dead body sitting on it, its one remaining eye empty. Ray had been avoiding looking at the couch and the slightly cleaner patch of carpet where the rug had been since the short and disturbingly cheerful white guy had disappeared with the corpse. He’d declined the offer to get the rug returned once it’d been shampooed.

“We made it back to 2019.” Allison continued, ignoring the faces that Klaus and ‘Five’, who had emerged from the kitchen, were making at each other with an ease that suggested many years of practice. “But it wasn’t _our_ 2019.” Seeing Ray’s confusion, she explained, “Five thinks that our being here, meeting people, talking to our Dad, it changed the future. More than he predicted. We stopped the apocalypse that was supposed to happen in 2019, but we can’t go back there.”

“Not yet.” Five said, from where he was now leaning against the wall, holding a fresh cup of coffee.

“We’ll get back.” Luther assured her with an earnest look. “Hope, remember?” Allison gave him a pained smile and wouldn’t meet Ray’s eyes.

“Hey.” He caught her face between his hands. “I meant what I said before. I know you have to go, and I can’t go with you. But I called myself lucky to have had a year with you then, and any extra time we get now is nothing short of a damn miracle baby.” She laughed, even though her eyes were wet.

“Well, doesn’t that just make you all warm and fuzzy.” Klaus’ tone was flippant, but his smile was real. Next to him, Vanya gave a quiet sniff.

“I need to make a phone call.”

“Phone’s in the kitchen.” Allison told her, and watched her go with a sad smile. Diego passed her in the kitchen doorway, a delicious smell following behind him.

“You guys get your asses in here. I made pancakes.”

“You.” Said Klaus, pointing gravely at Diego, as he somehow flounced up and off the sofa. “You are my favourite.” Nobody seemed inclined to argue with pancakes, and they all drifted towards the kitchen, Klaus throwing one arm around Ray’s shoulders and the other around Allison’s. “So Ray-Ray, pray tell, how did you meet our Allison?”

It turned out seven people didn’t fit in the Chestnut’s kitchen, especially considering one of them was a gigantic ape of a man. They all took a plate and spread out around the house: Vanya still by the phone, talking softly in between quick mouthfuls; the Chestnuts and Klaus chatting at the table; Luther and Diego bickering in the living room; and Five jumping around between them, insulting Luther and Diego and scribbling equations on the pad of paper they keep by the phone.

“You sure you don’t mind us staying here?” Allison asked him quietly, while Klaus was distracted telling some ridiculous story about accidentally-on-purpose-what-the-hell-why-not starting a cult.

“No.” Ray kissed her knuckles, looking around at the Hargreeves. “You’re welcome for as long as you - all of you - need.”

**Author's Note:**

> I used the term Chicano to describe Diego because I figured that's what Ray would assume as a black rights activist living in early 1960s Texas. For more about joint black and latino activism at the time, please check this out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicano_Movement
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> Again, please check out those we leave behind.


End file.
